


A Song to Suit Yourself

by dreamwreck



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Anthony J Crowley - Freeform, Fixation, Insomnia, Music, Scotland, Shapeshifting, Sleep, Snake Crowley (Good Omens), lullaby, metaphysical, vulnerable crowley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-06
Updated: 2020-01-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:35:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22141135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamwreck/pseuds/dreamwreck
Summary: Crowley fixates on a new type of music, though Aziraphale can’t quite figure why. What would a demon want with lullabies?
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	A Song to Suit Yourself

Neither knew exactly how they ended up in the same Scottish field at exactly the same time beneath the same lonely apple tree, but it probably had something to do with their impending assessments.

Hastur and Ligur would be around soon to check in and report on Crowley’s Deeds of the Day, which were quickly becoming Brief Surveys of the Deeds of the Decade, as they hardly ever popped around anymore. Crowley didn’t dare complain. But he’d been putting off his Evil Deed – you know, the Big One, which made up for a long dry period of demonic activity – and it was time to get on that. So. Scotland.

Aziraphale still received regular unscheduled visits from Gabriel, “just checking in” to see that all was going smoothly. Aziraphale had begun to question his own understanding of omnipotence. Or, at least the Head Office’s ability to communicate sporadic schedule changes to literally the only active angel they had on Earth. In biding his time – and seeking some overdue meditation – Scotland.

So much for that.

“They’re calling them ‘lullabies’,” Crowley said. “They sing them at children. To make them fall asleep.”

Aziraphale considered this news while he cut off another slice of red apple. He offered some to Crowley. The demon curled his upper lip at the clean white disk.

“Humans have always sang songs to their children,” Aziraphale said once he realized that the news was not news at all. “Remember Babylon?”

They both smiled self-pleased smiles. You’d almost think they were sharing the same memory, but for Crowley baring considerably sharper teeth. “Oh yes,” he said.

“That poor woman you tormented for a spell,” Aziraphale recalled. “I was the one who recommended that she write her composition down. It was a beautiful tune…in spite of its inspiration.” 

Crowley shrugged. “I did not ‘torment her.’ She adopted me as the house god, what was I supposed to do? I was on assignment. Besides, she had a lovely home. It was nice to settle down for a bit. The point is, now they have a new word for it.”

“For tormenting?”

“No. The music. Keep up.” He let the pieces of the word roll off his tongue. “Lull-ah-bye…”

Aziraphale was occupied with his apple, plucked from the branches above. In his humble and learnéd opinion, few tastes in the world yet rivaled that of a fresh-picked apple. Being an angel, he also had an extensive understanding of the art of Music. Angels invented it, after all, but its purposes were rather limited in Heaven. If Crowley had come to him with news of a new kind of Music, or a new purpose for it, he would have been ecstatic and fully enthralled. But he hadn’t, so he wasn’t, and was therefore only mildly interested, though he tried his best to humor his associate. “Singing to babies helps them grow, you know. It teaches them new sounds, new words. And I personally don’t believe you’re ever too young to discover the joy of Music.”

Crowley chose not to tell him that he was missing the point, but he wasn’t entirely sure of his point to begin with. Something about the word struck a strange chord with him (all puns unintended and unrecognized). It had a sound like a plucked lute string and the curve of a lifting chin.

For a while, in silence, the two continued their survey of the Scottish countryside and a hundred miles beyond. Serious business. The evening began to settle in a comfortable calm, the sun yawning out a stretch of gold before its final disappearance beneath the hills. The angel and the demon each wondered what the other was thinking. Aziraphale wondered why Crowley had become so caught up in a single word. Crowley wondered why Aziraphale hadn’t.

The angel bit into another slice of apple. The satisfying crunch in the silence finally whet Crowley’s own appetite. He flicked his wrist and a bright red replica of the angel’s supper fell into his hand.

Aziraphale looked hurt. “I hadn’t realized this tree’s fruit dissatisfied you.”

“What, did I hurt its feelings?”

“No,” Aziraphale said, taking a moment to examine himself, not wanting to lie. “But I’m quite proud of this tree.” He sat a little taller. “I planted and raised it from seed myself, you know.”

Crowley – who had been leaning against the apple tree’s trunk since the early morning – sat up and scrutinized the bark as though he’d just noticed it were there. 

“Well what’d you go and do something like that for? When you could just –”

He snapped his long fingers. A few paces off, a plum tree that had not been there before shivered in a gentle breeze that had not been caused by anything but a general notion.

Aziraphale flushed. “I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. They’ve been cracking down on miracles that are not meant for a heavenly purpose. Besides, I found that I rather enjoyed the process of raising a living thing. You might try it, learn a thing or two. Watering, trimming, revisiting the little sapling now and again to encourage it out of the ground. And it clearly paid off. It took time and it took patience. And it was beautiful. The way God intended.”

Crowley gagged. Time and patience. The plum tree disappeared, but a pile of fresh, dark plums remained at his arm’s length, the skin so deeply purple they were almost black. “Suit yourself,” he said. “Just seems a waste of time.”

“Of course you’d think that,” Aziraphale said. “You know, it’s your constant need for excitement that gets you into trouble. You never sit still.”

“I do!” Crowley defended through a mouthful of bleeding plum. “I am now! And I do when I…you know, when I…you know.”

Aziraphale did not know, but he waited patiently for Crowley to realize that. Crowley did not elaborate.

He tossed his half-eaten fruit into the field, grumbling, “Who came up with the name ‘lullaby’ anyway? They’ve been rubbish at naming things from the Beginning. I’ll never forgive them for the turtle dove…Lullaby. Luhll. Ahhh. Bye. Stupid from the start. Lull….”

“For a dissenter, it sure sticks to your tongue easily.”

“So does mud. Doesn’t make it worth the taste. They think they’re so clever. If they’re so clever, switch things up a bit, do. All those songs, all lullabies ever talk about are dreams and trees and all the pain coming your way if you don’t fall asleep right this instant. All these languages since Babel and not a single one has whipped together hardly anything to move me to tears. Frankly, I’m just not impressed.”

He stopped. Not because he was finished. He felt eyes on him. Angel eyes, confused and concerned, and certainly out of their element.

Aziraphale cleared his throat. “Perhaps if you let them know that you have been their target audience all along, they’d show improvement. Better yet, put all that wealth of yours to use and commission one to your liking. Lord knows why you care in the first place.”

Aziraphale’s apple had finally been reduced to its core. The knife he was using ceased to exist.

“They’re too much like you lot,” Crowley continued. “Or at least you. Moving so slow. Doing slow things and inventing things that make them move even slower. Want to put the goblins to sleep? They’ve got spells for that. Spoon o’ brandy will do the trick. Or a knock upside the head. Practically instantaneous.”

Aziraphale bristled. “I thank God no one has put a child in your care.”

“On that, angel, we assent.”

The angel stood up, brushed out his jacket and tights. “I best get a move on. Several evening miracles to perform in the next town over.”

Crowley didn’t move, but he was suddenly standing. “Likewise. Which way are you headed?”

Aziraphale pointed to the north.

Crowley jabbed a thumb over his shoulder toward the south.

“Will you be in Scotland long?”

Crowley looked out to the empty fields. “Depends on what I can find here. I suppose if you’ll be around, I’ll be around. You know. Cancel –”

“Cancel each other out. Yes,” Aziraphale said, low and bristling, turning to the north. “Well, good evening to you.”

He paused. “I hope you find a song to suit your heart.” And he started north across the field, leaving Crowley, who did not turn to the south, alone beneath the apple tree. 

Crowley slumped down against the trunk with his legs stretched toward the setting sun.

Sunsets start to look the same the more you see and the longer you live. There had been only a handful of truly extraordinary sunsets that stuck in Crowley’s busy memory since the Beginning, and few of them were memorable without their contexts. Context is everything. He’d given up long ago on watching sunsets for the hope of an explosion of color to beat the rest. But he still appreciated the thrill of witnessing night stretch over the world like a lumbering dragon splaying out for a nap.

He missed dragons. Not many of them left, nowadays.

As darkness settled in, Crowley began a meditation of his own.

All around him, he felt history’s fine threads weave through the air. Ghosts and imprints left on the surface of the earth and the face of Time itself that had disappeared from visual perception, but lingered as golden strands only few could ever see. Battles and laughter, deaths and creation, all tangled together and tumbling, just above the ground and through the rich soil. Threads thick as vines wrapping around the trunk of the apple tree. The eternal, distant echoes of screams and songs looping round and round the earth like Saturn’s rings, and if Crowley squinted hard enough, he could see their harmonies gleaming.

“I do sit still,” he said to no one in the dark. Or maybe, not to no one.

“Why do they get songs?” he wondered aloud. “What do they have to be comforted about? Everything is given to them, handed to them. All they do is sleep. Bet no one sings their parents songs. They’ve got the hardest of the lot. They’ve got all the troubles. No one writes lullabies for the ones who need them most.”

And he knew in his heart – or the swirling matter he’d begun to think of as the place where part of his not-soul lived – exactly why children got all the songs. Because children need distractions from all the Unknown they float in, until they can lift their heads and start finding answers for themselves. The Unknown is a terrible thing to dwell on, even for the youngest minds, whose curiosity more often than not sustains them.

And for the ones who know? Are there no songs for them? The Unknown scrambles the mind, yes, but the Certain, the Absolute, whittles the mind to a rounded end. Fixation on the Certain can be as maddening as floating in obscurity.

Crowley was falling back into fixation. Such was often the case whenever he sat still, so he tried to avoid it whenever possible. But true to pattern, his mind eventually numbed to the humming of the world, to the whispers of Time wrapping like gossamer around this green earth, invisible to all but the eyes of those who have seen more, who know more, and carry the burden of the Certain. And the boiling lake sloshing deep within the earth grew hot against his calves and the heels of his feet.

He tilted his head up to the sky and squinted into the cobalt. The harmonies of history came into focus, golden ribbons rippling in tired dance.

He hadn’t slept in nearly a century. When he last awoke, he’d missed a lot, and wasn’t anxious to miss any more. But now, unnamed weight rested on his head, a heavy fog that stings the eyes and confuses the senses. The kind with its own eyes lurking just beyond the haze. Not a comfortable Saturday morning fog, by any means.

He wanted to lie down forever. He wished this field were safe enough to do just that, but sensed beyond the hills the warm bodies of beasts waking up to hunt by dim starlight, and he fancied this body too much to risk its demise.

Suddenly, there was a snake, long, dark, and terrifying, and if someone were to notice this creature as it slithered around and up the wide tree trunk, they’d see its scales shimmering impossibly through the pitch black eve, reflecting an invisible light. It curled up on a scooping bough like an endless coil of shadowy rope, and it was thankful for the tree being there tonight. 

Snakes cannot hum. That’s impossible. But many impossible things had already happened that day, and the snake, feeling safe enough to do so within the dense shelter of leaves, tried his hand at melody, content for the words he deeply felt to remain unformed, unspoken, as the song was for him alone, and he was – as he knew and feared – quite alone for now.

**Author's Note:**

> Crowley and Aziraphale's memories of Babylon refer to one of the first recorded lullabies in history -- a woman's song warned her child to be quiet and go to sleep, or else the house god would be angry.


End file.
